Growing Everyday

Andrew has been teaching the kids to play marbles. So far the kids beat Andrew every time, but they are always willing to share marbles in order to play again. We also tried making some clay creations. They didn’t turn out so well after I baked them. The picture is a before picture. OH well that means we can try again someday.

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Tonight the kids and I made oobleck to play with at the table since it was kind of icky outside. Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid. If you want to know what that means follow the link. As impressive as it sounds all you do is mix corn starch with water. I think I did about a 1:1 ratio. In all honesty, though, I dumped a bunch of corn starch in a bowl and added water until I got thie semi-fluid stuff. The kids loved it. It runs through your fingers like a liquid but if you hit it, the oobleck becomes more solid. It was cool.

Now onto Manny. Manny is our pet praying mantis. Yes, we now have a pet. While we were playing with the oobleck, I noticed something on our window screen. Andrew said it was a praying mantis and immediately set out to catch it. He caught it and now it is in a jar sitting on our counter. Beka was especially excited. Both kids found some grass for it. Jared went out for sticks for Manny to climb on. Everyone went out to look for bugs for Manny to eat. This should be very interesting to see if Manny lives very long at all.

Edit: We let Manny go September 21. Beka thought he looked homesick.

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Beka has dreams. She has big dreams. Right now she even has a plan for her life. She is going to become an entomologist so she can buy horses to ride. And you know what I believe her. She is already very interested in bugs.

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Yes, those are both pictures of slugs. She also has a dead cicada in her room and she constantly goes outside to collect roly-polies, worms, earwigs (which freak mommy out), and millipedes. Beka has decided to stay away from centipedes since one bit her.

Jared hasn’t always been as keen on reading as Beka. But I have now found a book that keeps him interesting and fascinated. Abiyoyo is a book about a giant who then disappears. This book is 42 pages long and Jared reads it to us. Not word for word but he knows what happens on each page. It is just adorable to watch as he reads it with voices and inflection.

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Yesterday, church started an 8:00 a.m. service so all of us went to church together and then the kids went to Sunday school afterwards. Well, the sermon topic was parenting specifically common parenting blunders. Our pastor started out by saying all parents do some things wrong or something to that effect. My adorable daughter then looks at me and whispers, “Mommy, parents don’t do anything wrong.” All I could do was nod and tell her she was right. Really what else was I going to say?

Edit by Andrew: Now if we can just get her to believe that until she’s 30….

Well, today was the big day. All three of us went back to school. Teaching was great to do again. All of the kids in my class are wonderful.

Now onto Beka and Jared’s first day. We started out a little rough because Jared seemed to think Buzz Lightyear needed to go to school too. Once it was settled that Buzz could go but only if he stayed quiet in Jared’s backpack, everything was fine. There were no tears, no last minute needs from Mommy. Beka and Jared did great. They listened well and got along with all the kids. I was very proud of how they did.

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